Project Jacquard is Envisioning Clothing Made With Smart Yarn

Project Jacquard is an absolutely audacious but potentially world-changing innovation from Google's ATAP lab. The idea is easy to summarize but difficult to digest -- it involves weaving conductive yarns into textiles, making it possible for your clothes to be used as touchscreens.

The touch-sensitive yarns use metallic alloy combined with regular yarn from materials like cotton and silk. The resulting yarn is strong enough to be woven into any article of clothing, but is also touch-sensitive.

The implications for Project Jacquard's innovations are mind-boggling. As wearable technology, smartwatches and connected home devices take off, it will be increasingly important to come up with new ways of controlling them, and this smart yarn technology will enable just that.